Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Googland

Googland

[G] Blog This!

Posted: 21 Jun 2011 10:21 PM PDT

Blogger Buzz: Blog This!

Posted by Bruce Polderman, Product Manager

One of the things I often hear is how challenging it can be to generate ideas for topics to write about. This may be especially true for popular blogs when you feel as though your followers are eagerly awaiting your next post. Sitting down and staring at your computer with the hope of feeling inspired can result in disappointment. 

On my blog for example, I have a mix of posts that were authored be me, and articles that I've discovered elsewhere that I think may be of interest to others. Like many of you, there are times when I have things that I'm eager to write about, and other times when I just want to share something.

If this sounds familiar, you may find the "Blog This!" Chrome Extension of interest. It enables you post to your blog from any web page with just one click. The Extension is available on the Chrome Web Store under the "Blogging" category.

When you install the extension, a button will appear on your browser toolbar. Simply click the button to open Blogger in a new application window.

The new post is pre-populated with a link to the web page you're on, as well as any text you've highlighted on that page. Edit the post to your liking and post it instantly to your blog.
Happy blogging!
URL: http://buzz.blogger.com/2011/06/blog-this.html

[G] Open files more easily in Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office

Posted: 21 Jun 2011 06:06 PM PDT

The Google Apps Blog: Open files more easily in Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office

(Cross-posted to the Enterprise blog)

One of the key features of Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office is the ability to easily sync Office documents up to Google Docs and to collaborate on them with others. You asked us to simplify the experience of downloading and opening Office documents stored in your Google Docs account, so today we're doing just that. Now you can open any Office file stored in Google Docs directly from within Microsoft Office.

From the Google Cloud Connect menu, click Open from Google Docs…


This will bring up a dialog listing all the documents that can be opened with the application you are using. For example, if you are working in Microsoft PowerPoint, you will see a list of all the Microsoft PowerPoint files available in Google Docs. You can then select the file you want to download and open.


If you have lots of files stored in Google Docs, use search to find the file you are looking for. After selecting a file to open, the file will be downloaded to your computer and opened automatically.

When you want to open the file again, you'll be able to open it from the folder you downloaded the file into. Now you can collaborate, share and access revision history on that file in Microsoft Office.

As always, we would love to hear your feedback and thoughts.

Posted by: Himanshu Vasishth, Software Engineer
URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/GoogleAppsBlog/~3/CCEOF0Vy3TI/open-files-more-easily-in-google-cloud.html

[G] Open files more easily in Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office

Posted: 21 Jun 2011 03:51 PM PDT

Official Google Enterprise Blog: Open files more easily in Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office

Posted by Himanshu Vasishth, Software Engineer

(Cross-posted from the Docs Blog.)

One of the key features of Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office is the ability to easily sync Office documents up to Google Docs and to collaborate on them with others. You asked us to simplify the experience of downloading and opening Office documents stored in your Google Docs account, so today we're doing just that. Now you can open any Office file stored in Google Docs directly from within Microsoft Office.

From the Google Cloud Connect menu, click Open from Google Docs…


This will bring up a dialog listing all the documents that can be opened with the application you are using. For example, if you are working in Microsoft PowerPoint, you will see a list of all the Microsoft PowerPoint files available in Google Docs. You can then select the file you want to download and open.


If you have a lot of files stored in Google Docs, use search to find the file you are looking for. After selecting a file to open, the file will be downloaded to your computer and opened automatically.

When you want to open the file again, you'll be able to open it from the folder you downloaded the file into. Now you can collaborate, share and access revision history on that file in Microsoft Office.

As always, please send us your feedback and thoughts.

URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2011/06/open-files-more-easily-in-google-cloud.html

[G] Google Apps Adventures: Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca pushes the limits of speed on the track and in the office with Google Apps

Posted: 21 Jun 2011 03:51 PM PDT

Official Google Enterprise Blog: Google Apps Adventures: Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca pushes the limits of speed on the track and in the office with Google Apps

Editor's note: We're thrilled to share stories from the people and organizations that use Google Apps to explore, discover and push the boundaries. These businesses truly embody the freedom enabled by the cloud.

Our fourth Apps Adventure profiles Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca, a racing organization based in Monterey, California that hosts world-renowned motorsport events at the track in Laguna Seca.

The famous corkscrew at Turn 8 defines how racers push the limits of speed at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca. One of the most challenging turns in racing, drivers experience a blind uphill approach then a dramatic drop in elevation in the second half of the corkscrew. The turn is part of a 2.238-mile long track that's been navigated by racing professionals from around the globe.

Every season, our organization hosts world-class races at the track, bringing thousands of motorsport enthusiasts to the Monterey Peninsula. From Ferrari Racing Days to the Red Bull U.S. Grand Prix motorcycle races, our staff is dedicated to hosting events that showcase extreme speed. To accomplish this, we need the right technology behind the scenes that works for onsite employees as well as our hundreds of volunteers. As a result, last year we switched to Google Apps and it's been a natural fit for our organization.

Before Google Apps, we used Microsoft® Exchange and it was maintained by more than a dozen volunteers. When I started at Mazda Raceway, I spent about 20 percent of my time just keeping the email servers going. We needed to speed up how we worked and Google Apps offered this with email and other productivity apps at a fraction of the cost of our old system. There are no upgrades necessary, no server maintenance, no downtime, and worldwide availability. It just works—without any effort from me or our volunteers.

Google Apps has quickly become a core part of how we run our organization. We rely heavily on Google Calendar for scheduling and have added shared resources like conference rooms and VGA projectors that can be booked at the same time a meeting is scheduled. We're accelerating teamwork internally with Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office and are using Google Docs and Sites to improve a range of business processes.

For example, volunteers are critical to our success and Google Apps makes it easier to recruit and manage them. We now have a volunteer resource site, created from Google Sites, where we embedded a Google form to track sign-ups. Instead of having volunteers print out a form and fax or mail it to us, they submit their information online and it automatically fills an internal Google spreadsheet.

Everyone at Mazda Raceway is constantly on the move. From executives traveling abroad to staff members who are often out on the property (the track is situated on more than 500 acres), Google Apps gives everyone the ability to communicate from anywhere. Mail, contacts and calendars are automatically synced to each person's mobile phone without any work on my part.

At Mazda Raceway, we all have a passion for racing and want to share that passion with our fans. Watch the video below to learn more about how Google Apps is helping us do this. And if you love racing as much as we do, experience our track using the Street View feature in Google Maps.



Posted by George Krieger, Technical Services Manager, Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca
URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2011/06/google-apps-adventures-mazda-raceway.html

[G] Going Google in India: Indian Youth Congress & Punjlloyd move to Google Apps for Business

Posted: 21 Jun 2011 03:51 PM PDT

Official Google Enterprise Blog: Going Google in India: Indian Youth Congress & Punjlloyd move to Google Apps for Business

Posted by Pradeep Agarwal, Head of Google Enterprise, India

(Cross-posted from the Google India Blog.)

Today in Mumbai, more than 400 IT and business leaders will join Google executives, industry experts and some of our local partners for the first Google Enterprise Roadshow in India. Themed around 'The Future of Work', the roadshow explores how local companies are embracing Google's enterprise cloud computing solutions to improve company-wide communication, document management and team collaboration. We are seeing strong adoption of Google Apps for Business in India, and today we are excited to announce two new customers that are among the latest to go Google:

Indian Youth Congress (IYC) is the official youth wing of the Indian National Congress and one of the largest youth organizations in the world. After evaluating a number of solutions for email and collaboration, IYC opted to move its more than 28,000 elected officials and volunteers to Google Apps for Business. The collaborative capabilities of Google Apps will help IYC deliver on its mission of transparent and democratic participation and empower its members to work for local development in India using technology.

As Rajeev Satav, National President of IYC, says "Technology is a great enabler in bringing people together and operating efficiently. We're excited about being the first social organization in India to adopt the latest cloud technology from Google. With Google Apps we will be better equipped to work with India's youth and leverage the power of technology to conduct programs of local relevance and contribute to our vision."

Punj Lloyd is a leading global provider of engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) services in the energy and infrastructure sectors. From the engineering of the world's largest wheat-based Bioethanol plant in England to the design of the highest reinforced earth wall for an airport in the foothills of the Himalayas, virtually all of Punj Lloyds' projects require great teamwork and knowledge-sharing among the company's 24,000 employees.

Yet until now, Punj Lloyd's teams had no easy way to collaborate with one another. With operations in over 20 countries across the Middle East, Africa, Asia Pacific and South Asia, Punj Lloyd's IT department had the tough job of maintaining a legacy email system with dozens of client applications being used to access email. After evaluating several on-premise and hosted options for email and collaboration, Punj Lloyd chose Google Apps for Business.

The company has just started the transition, and soon employees from different departments and teams working across timezones will be able to share documents and calendars, video chat, and create internal sites that everyone in the company can access. With Google Apps, Punj Lloyd's IT department no longer has to maintain a legacy email system, and employees benefit from new, modern communication tools designed for team collaboration.

Hundreds of thousands of businesses have chosen to go Google across India. In doing so, they have made a choice to adopt secure and proven web-based productivity tools that are designed for team collaboration and accessibility from any device. We are committed to helping more Indian businesses make the transition to the 100% web world and we firmly believe that this will be a huge improvement for both users and IT departments in all organizations.
URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2011/06/going-google-in-india-indian-youth.html

[G] Google Apps Script opens new ways to deliver workflow solutions for businesses

Posted: 21 Jun 2011 03:51 PM PDT

Official Google Enterprise Blog: Google Apps Script opens new ways to deliver workflow solutions for businesses

Posted by John Gale, Solution Developer, Appogee

Editors note: Guest author John Gale is a developer at Appogee, a Google focused systems integrator in the UK. John helps Appogee customers make the most of the Google platform and is the author of Appogee Bookmarks for Android.

Google Sites offers an incredible way to author and distribute content, and we use it extensively both for ourselves and our clients. Therefore it was not surprising that our customers started requesting a content approval workflow in Google Sites. Now with Google Apps Script, we have been able to develop Appogee Content Approval for Google Sites.

The Solution
Appogee Content Approval for Google Sites (ACA) can be set up for any existing Google Site without having to make any changes to the site. ACA works as follows:
  1. The ACA spreadsheet generates a Content Submission Form and any content submitted is routed to a selected approver.
  2. The approver receives an email notification, which they can authorize or reject.
  3. Once authorized, the ACA spreadsheet writes the new content into the target Site using Apps Script's Sites services. The new content is then visible to anyone with view permissions in the target site.

Approver receives an email containing the submitted content

The content submission URL can be shared to any group or published directly on the target Google Site, which represents the end goal on the workflow diagram below. Content may only be submitted by users that are logged into your domain and content can only be published with Approver sanction.
ACA Workflow Diagram


Google Apps Script made it easy
We used a number of Apps Script services to develop this application. Apps Script was an easy choice as it builds on pooled knowledge from the Google Web Toolkit (GWT) and uses Javascript syntax. Using Apps Script's UI Services, we were able build up a working user interface quickly. Google has since introduced a new experimental feature to complement the UI Services, which provides a drag and drop GUI for building screens. We expect this feature to reduce development time required for building future apps, as well as offering a wide range of widgets and controls to improve the user experience. We used a standard Google spreadsheet as a kind of a data store in ACA. It's worth mentioning that Apps Script's documentation site has a plethora of tutorials covering everything from simple spreadsheet macros to full help desk applications.

One of Google Apps Scripts' core features is the ability to seamlessly integrate different services together, in our case this was Google Sites and Spreadsheets, but many other services are accessible, such as Mail and Contacts. It was always the aim to make ACA a powerful tool without unnecessary complexity and thanks to Google Apps Script, we have successfully delivered content approval workflow to Google Sites. ACA represents our third off-the-shelf product to be listed in the Google Apps Marketplace.
URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2011/06/google-apps-scripts-opens-new-ways-to.html

[G] Third largest newspaper in the US moves to Google Apps to centralize IT and improve collaboration

Posted: 21 Jun 2011 03:51 PM PDT

Official Google Enterprise Blog: Third largest newspaper in the US moves to Google Apps to centralize IT and improve collaboration

Posted by Terry Geiger, Director of Corporate IT, The McClatchy Company

Editors note: We're pleased to welcome guest blogger Terry Geiger, Director of Corporate IT at The McClatchy Company. Learn more about other organizations that have gone Google on our community map.

With headquarters in Sacramento, Calif., The McClatchy Company has more than 8,400 employees with 30 daily newspapers spread throughout the U.S. Historically, each newspaper has operated independently with on-premise software and their own various business operation departments and specifically IT. To date, our technology has been both destandardized and decentralized, but our vision is to become a more collaborative organization and centralized where it makes best sense. We want to act as a cohesive enterprise, not a collection of smaller companies.

We have 8,500 mailboxes (individual and shared) spread across all 30 of our operations. Individual newspapers had been operating using various versions of Microsoft® Exchange Server, and managing that complexity had become expensive and cumbersome. All of these separate systems also made it very challenging for us collaborate. Just seeing the calendar of a co-worker at another newspaper or having access to reliable contacts wasn't possible in many cases. I knew that email was one of the first things we needed to standardize to promote collaboration and begin to innovate in an industry not always known for being on the cutting edge of technology.

Also, Email has become a business-critical function and with the economy and its impact on the newspaper industry, we had lost confidence in our ability to effectively manage and maintain such a distributed email environment with our diminished resources. We needed a solution that was easy to use and required little from IT to maintain.

We started evaluating technology options that could help us make collaboration across our entire organization a reality. We looked at Google Apps as well as Microsoft® Office 365 and BPOS. When evaluating our options we asked ourselves several questions: What's the service level offered? What is their support like? Will there be people there to help when we have questions or run into issues? What is their record for uptime and reliability? We just didn't see Microsoft providing the services aspect of "software as as service." Their record for uptime was particularly concerning. Overall, Microsoft just doesn't seem to have the services mindset that we found with Google.

Microsoft may still be the personal productivity leader, but Google is the team productivity leader. Google Apps and its collaborative nature are really where we want to go. Google has a better service strategy, better collaborative strategy, and a better cost structure.

In making our decision, we also calculated the cost of avoiding upgrades to our Microsoft Exchange and Office licenses. We estimate that Google Apps will cost only 67% of what we would have spent on the equivalent Microsoft technology over 5 years.

We're currently working with SADA Systems to roll out Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Talk, and Google Sites. We'll then let Google Docs take hold organically, but we are no longer going to en masse upgrade our Microsoft Office licenses. As a content creation and management company, the need to collaborate is tremendous and we're excited about empowering our team to work together with Google Docs.

In addition to "anywhere access" email, we will now be able to synchronize calendars across the organization. We have secure chat functionality, and Google Sites to create a much better connection between sales staff and customers. IT can focus on other business-critical functions that generate revenue, manage content creation and delivery and put collaboration and content creation into the hands of our users.

We worried that there would be some resistance to this change, but our announcement to move to Google Apps has been met with a lot of enthusiasm – our employees are really excited. We see this as a critical part of our overall effort to use technical innovations like Google Apps to change the way that we operate our business.

URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2011/06/third-largest-newspaper-in-us-moves-to.html

[G] Web Analytics TV #19 - The Most Productive Episode

Posted: 21 Jun 2011 02:17 PM PDT

Google Analytics Blog: Web Analytics TV #19 - The Most Productive Episode

Welcome to one of our most productive episodes of Web Analytics TV yet! We had so much fun doing this one, you are going to have a blast as well.

Web Analytics TV, as you well know by now, is powered by your questions. In this episode we had questions from Australia, Brazil, India, Denmark, England, Netherlands and so many other places. Y'all rock!

If you're new to this show, our process for this show is simple.

Step 1: You ask, or vote on, your favorite web analytics questions. Vote on next week's questions using this Web Analytics TV Google Moderator site.

Step 2: From a secret undisclosed location at the Googleplex Avinash Kaushik & Nick Mihailovski answer them. : )

In this episode we bring back the "Ninja of the Episode" and award it to Aaron from Tasmania, Australia. Really great questions Aaron. Just email us and we'll send you a signed copy of Web analytics 2.0.

Here is the list of last weeks questions.

In this action packed episode we discuss:
  • (1:36) Cookies and laws (and milk)
  • (2:28) Setting multiple conditions for goals via Advanced Segments
  • (4:45) Using event tracking and custom reports to track calendars
  • (6:45) Getting site link data in Google Analytics
  • (7:37) Tracking conversions for individual products
  • (9:25) Best practices for setting up Google Analytics for different clients
  • (10:35) Tracking shopping carts on different domains
  • (11:54) Tracking internal site search on AJAX-type site search
  • (13:50) Combining referrals from different sites
  • (15:30) Implementing cross domain tracking with the async-tracking code
  • (17:05) How to determine when data is sampled
  • (19:42) Browser support for page speed reports
  • (22:08) Getting the name of each configured goal via the API
  • (23:16) When the GAIQ test will include version 5 content
  • (24:08) Getting hourly overview metrics in Google Analytics
  • (25:11) Differences between webmaster tools clicks and visits in GA
  • (26:18) How much income should you have to employee a web analyst
  • (30:06) Goal completions by different landing pages
  • (31:19) Visit duration calculation in Google Analytics
  • (32:53) Where to find e-commerce city and region data in Google Analytics
  • (34:02) Stopping other sites from sending fake traffic
  • (34:55) Virtual page views showing up in custom reports


Here are the links to the topics we discuss:
As always, if you need help setting up Google Analytics or leveraging the advanced configuration options, we recommend hiring a Google Analytics Certified Partner.

If you found this post or video helpful, we'd love to hear your comments. Please share them via the comment form below.

This series would not be possible without your awesome questions. Please submit them on our public Google Moderator site, and while you are there don't forget to vote for your favourite questions. Avinash and I will answer them in a couple of weeks with yet another entertaining video.

Posted by Nick Mihailovski, Google Analytics Team


URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/tRaA/~3/m1K5EKcPs98/web-analytics-tv-19-most-productive.html

[G] Music Tuesday: Other Music, Terra Naomi and Pete Rock

Posted: 21 Jun 2011 12:00 PM PDT

YouTube Blog: Music Tuesday: Other Music, Terra Naomi and Pete Rock

Summer is finally underway in the northern hemisphere, and while new releases may be slowing down, youtube.com/music is getting busy. Neo-soul songstress Jill Scott graced us with a playlist of her inspirations over the weekend, the ever-charming Alicia Keys celebrates the ten-year anniversary of Songs In A Minor with an invitation to the YouTube community and the music world mourned the loss of Clarence Clemons, the gentle giant who played saxophone with Bruce Springsteen for more than thirty years. Meanwhile, everybody from Bon Iver to Pitbull are releasing new albums today. Later this week we'll feature a contest, another video premiere and some very special coverage from England's Glastonbury music festival; be sure to check out youtube.com/music over the weekend for updates.

Other Music recommends...music!
When we started inviting independent record stores to curate playlists of their favorite music, we had no idea that so many of you would be watching. More than 500k views later, Amoeba Music's playlist is still turning people on to good music, so this month we head to the East Coast to see what's popping at Other Music, the New York record store known as a home to all things indie, experimental and adventurous. They came up with a creative collection of videos which we're featuring on the homepage today.



Terra Naomi
One of YouTube's early music stars, Terra Naomi set the template for many who followed. Her song "Say It's Possible" featured one of the first crowdsourced music videos; five years later, she's releasing a new album and a new crowdsourced video, which she's premiering with us today. The video is directed by Alex Albrecht and made in conjunction with iPhone app Hipstamatic and pulls images from over 10,000 entries from around the world. She also shares a playlist of some of her favorite cover songs of all time.



Smif-n-Wessun & Pete Rock premiere the album Monumental
Smif-n-Wessun (later known as Cocoa Brovaz after a legal dispute over their name) helped define hardcore hip-hop lyricism with a string of successful, critically-lauded albums back in the 1990s. Pete Rock has been in the game just as long, an emcee and producer who helped define jazz-hop alongside acts like A Tribe Called Quest. He went on to become one of the Wu-Tang Clan's go-to producers, crafting tracks for everyone from Raekwon to Ghostface Killah. Monumental proves the duo's tag-team rap style is still on lock, while Pete Rock's production never misses the mark — and often recalls his late, great colleague, the venerated J Dilla. Check it out now, one week before release date.



Sarah Bardeen recently watched "Breakbot - 'Fantasy' (Jacques Renault remix)."


URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/youtube/PKJx/~3/A-kk8GVqJP4/music-tuesday-other-music-terra-naomi.html

[G] Open files more easily in Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office

Posted: 21 Jun 2011 10:54 AM PDT

Docs Blog: Open files more easily in Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office

(Cross-posted to the Enterprise blog)

One of the key features of Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office is the ability to easily sync Office documents up to Google Docs and to collaborate on them with others. You asked us to simplify the experience of downloading and opening Office documents stored in your Google Docs account, so today we're doing just that. Now you can open any Office file stored in Google Docs directly from within Microsoft Office.

From the Google Cloud Connect menu, click Open from Google Docs…


This will bring up a dialog listing all the documents that can be opened with the application you are using. For example, if you are working in Microsoft PowerPoint, you will see a list of all the Microsoft PowerPoint files available in Google Docs. You can then select the file you want to download and open.


If you have lots of files stored in Google Docs, use search to find the file you are looking for. After selecting a file to open, the file will be downloaded to your computer and opened automatically.

When you want to open the file again, you'll be able to open it from the folder you downloaded the file into. Now you can collaborate, share and access revision history on that file in Microsoft Office.

As always, we would love to hear your feedback and thoughts.

Posted by: Himanshu Vasishth, Software Engineer
URL: http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2011/06/open-files-more-easily-in-google-cloud.html

[G] Google Translate welcomes you to the Indic web

Posted: 21 Jun 2011 10:36 AM PDT

Official Google Blog: Google Translate welcomes you to the Indic web

(Cross-posted on the Translate Blog)


 

Beginning today, you can explore the linguistic diversity of the Indian sub-continent with Google Translate, which now supports five new experimental alpha languages: Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Tamil and Telugu. In India and Bangladesh alone, more than 500 million people speak these five languages. Since 2009, we've launched a total of 11 alpha languages, bringing the current number of languages supported by Google Translate to 63.

Indic languages differ from English in many ways, presenting several exciting challenges when developing their respective translation systems. Indian languages often use the Subject Object Verb (SOV) ordering to form sentences, unlike English, which uses Subject Verb Object (SVO) ordering. This difference in sentence structure makes it harder to produce fluent translations; the more words that need to be reordered, the more chance there is to make mistakes when moving them. Tamil, Telugu and Kannada are also highly agglutinative, meaning a single word often includes affixes that represent additional meaning, like tense or number. Fortunately, our research to improve Japanese (an SOV language) translation helped us with the word order challenge, while our work translating languages like German, Turkish and Russian provided insight into the agglutination problem.

You can expect translations for these new alpha languages to be less fluent and include many more untranslated words than some of our more mature languages—like Spanish or Chinese—which have much more of the web content that powers our statistical machine translation approach. Despite these challenges, we release alpha languages when we believe that they help people better access the multilingual web. If you notice incorrect or missing translations for any of our languages, please correct us; we enjoy learning from our mistakes and your feedback helps us graduate new languages from alpha status. If you're a translator, you'll also be able to take advantage of our machine translated output when using the Google Translator Toolkit.

Since these languages each have their own unique scripts, we've enabled a transliterated input method for those of you without Indian language keyboards. For example, if you type in the word "nandri," it will generate the Tamil word நன்றி (see what it means). To see all these beautiful scripts in action, you'll need to install fonts* for each language.

We hope that the launch of these new alpha languages will help you better understand the Indic web and encourage the publication of new content in Indic languages, taking us five alpha steps closer to a web without language barriers.

*Download the fonts for each language: Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Gujarati and Kannada.

Posted by Ashish Venugopal, Research Scientist
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/google-translate-welcomes-you-to-indic.html

[G] Announcing the Gold Star Partner Showcase

Posted: 21 Jun 2011 09:05 AM PDT

Inside AdSense: Announcing the Gold Star Partner Showcase

We're very excited to launch the AdSense Gold Star Partnership Showcase - a feature on the blog dedicated to our exemplary AdSense partners. We'd like to recognize some of the amazing websites that add immeasurable value to the Google Display Network and who contribute to the growth and diversity of the Internet. While sites come in many different flavors, Gold Star Partners will exemplify these three basic principles:
If you're currently an AdSense for content partner and you think you have what it takes to become a Gold Star Partner that may be featured on our blog, we invite you to submit your website by Tuesday, July 5th.

We may feature a few of the submissions in the AdSense Gold Star Partnership Showcase next month, so make sure to check back in!

Posted by Julia Riley, AdSense Optimization Specialist


URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/tuAm/~3/LdUc8Ow1s5w/announcing-gold-star-partner-showcase.html

[G] YouTube Town Hall: members of Congress answer your questions on education, immigration and the economy

Posted: 21 Jun 2011 06:03 AM PDT

YouTube Blog: YouTube Town Hall: members of Congress answer your questions on education, immigration and the economy

Since we launched the YouTube Town Hall, an online platform for members of Congress to debate and discuss the most important issues of the day, representatives and citizens alike have actively used the site. Twenty-five members of Congress submitted videos across the six initial topics, and people watched these videos more than 1.1 million times. You cumulatively submitted more than 115,000 votes, and it was Tom Udall's video, "Time for Afghanistan Transition", that ended the month at the top of the YouTube Town Hall Leaderboard. The top five videos included a diverse array of issues from Senators and Representatives on both sides of the aisle:







Today we're launching round two with new topics. You've submitted hundreds of questions and voted thousands of times, and here are the three top questions that Congress is answering:

  1. Economy: We are greatly concerned about the current economic climate in the United States. Not only are prices on consumer goods going up, but the value of our currency is falling. How will Congress solve the burdens that weigh so heavily on everyone?
  2. Education: Technology is rapidly becoming one of the country's largest industries. How can high schools help prepare their students if they're using outdated computers and equipment?
  3. Immigration: There are millions of undocumented individuals living in the United States, many of whom were brought to the US as children. Is enacting the Dream Act a viable way for these individuals to be granted citizenship?
Visit YouTube Town Hall to watch members of Congress debate these new questions. And if you're interested in posing questions of your own, ask them here!



Will Houghteling, YouTube News and Politics, recently watched "Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson: U.S. Economy - By The Numbers."


URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/youtube/PKJx/~3/2IUqwhmTBCs/youtube-town-hall-members-of-congress.html

[G] Surveying the Rapidly Evolving Buyer / Seller Relationship

Posted: 21 Jun 2011 06:02 AM PDT

DoubleClick Publisher Blog: Surveying the Rapidly Evolving Buyer / Seller Relationship

The display advertising industry continues to evolve at a blinding pace as new technologies make an ever-expanding array of media buying and selling models available to savvy advertisers and publishers. In February, we partnered with DigiDay to explore the growth and impact of real-time bidding (RTB) with a Real-Time Display Advertising State of the Industry survey. The study revealed significant adoption - 87% of media buyers plan to buy via RTB in 2011 and 45% of publishers planned to make inventory available via RTB platforms this year.

Building on the back of this study, we conducted new wave of research to explore the broader trends impacting online sales channels from both a buyer and seller perspective. We presented the highlights of this study yesterday at DigiDay's DPAC conference in New York.

The survey identified a variety of perspectives between buyers and sellers, and also made it clear that both parties were optimistic about the opportunities presented by new innovations across the display landscape.

Buyers were most bullish on spending growth via networks and exchanges:
  • 30% of buyers believe that networks and exchanges will drive the most incremental digital ad spending. Top drivers identified by respondents included the need to reach audiences at scale (64%), a focus on buying efficiency (60%) and the ability to optimize (43%).
  • Buyers saw less of an increase in buys via direct sales, with only 14% of respondents identifying this channel as a top driver of spending. Motivation for direct sales channel investment was focused on the ability to execute custom sponsorships (56%) and the ability to negotiate price (48%).
  • 18% of buyers believed that Private Exchanges would be the top spending driver with transparency (29%) and the ability to negotiate price (26%) as the key influencers, and notably differentiating this channel from ad networks and "open" exchanges.
Publishers have a huge, and ever growing range of choices about how to best monetize and manage their inventory:
  • 79% of publishers believed that direct sales would be their biggest source of growth this year. Top drivers identified by respondents included growth from new formats and devices (57%), new audience targeting capabilities (44%) and unique ad units / sponsorships (39%).
  • 14% of sellers believed that networks and exchanges would be their leading growth driver. Top reasons for publishers to exploit these channels included access to new buyers (26%), excess inventory (21%) and the ability to reach data-driven buyers (21%).
  • Private Exchanges remained somewhat nascent, with only 7% of publishers identifying them as a leading channel for growth. Publishers preferred this new model for preventing channel conflict (56%), the ability to leverage their brand equity (50%), and the ability to maintain direct relationships on an exchange platform (47%). Most interestingly, 43% of publishers considering Private Exchanges saw growth in this channel as completely incremental.
What to make of these seemingly mismatched expectations? While audience reach and efficiency are at the top of the buyer agenda, it's also clear that context and relationships still matter. With the right protections and controls, publishers can also use the rapid pace of industry innovation to their advantage by experimenting with new selling models that leverage their assets and relationships, while unlocking new demand.

Posted by Jon Nevitt, Product Marketing Manager
URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DoubleclickPublisherBlog/~3/2hmPXkjvo7k/surveying-rapidly-evolving-buyer-seller.html
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